The second purchase was my ranch, Mockingbird Hill. The third purchase was Longhorn cattle.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.
I've got cattle on 4,000 acres about 100 miles east of Dallas, but I've also got another 65-acre ranch where I raise American miniature horses.
The ranch was raw land when I bought it and, for better or worse, I have designed every aspect of it from the corrals, the arena, to the barn, to the house.
I have a ranch in Montana, but it's not a real working ranch. I've always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that's as close as I come.
One of the first things I bought when I made 'Roseanne Show' money was a farm in Iowa.
In the 1970s, I bought some cheap horses, then decided that if I was going to be in it, I was going to go big time. So in 2001, Bill Casner, a partner with me in Excel, and I bought a breeding farm, WinStar Farm, together.
I always assumed the Department of Agriculture was the farmer and rancher's friend.
From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.
I wanted to be a cattle rancher when I was young, because it was what I knew and I loved it.
So Pa sold the little house. He sold the cow and calf. He made hickory bows and fastened them upright to the wagon box. Ma helped him stretch white canvas over them.